When the conventional wisdom about a game is so consistent across the board (Steele has it Georgia by one), the contrarian in me wants so badly to predict something different, but honesty compels me to agree with Bill Connelly.

This is the most exciting matchup of week 1. Both teams are athletic on defense and ridiculous on offense, and both teams’ weaknesses will be exploited by opponent strengths. The projections and spread each favor Georgia slightly, but this one’s close enough that counting turnovers and big plays will probably tell you who won.

I feel slightly more confident in Georgia this year, but I’ll feel more confident in the Dawgs once that secondary gels. But give me Georgia by 1, I guess. For now.

Both teams are going to move the ball. But I see Georgia, behind that running game, getting in the end zone one more time than Clemson does, which will be just enough to offset the Tigers having more total scoring drives on the night. My call: Georgia 35, Clemson 34.

A) Georgia’s defense is as bad as we thought: Young and inexperienced, they had to rely on the Offense to save their bacon.
B) Clemson’s offense is good, but not as good as we thought. They were stopped by a mediocre SEC Defense when it mattered most.
C) Georgia is still overrated because Clemson Clemson’d.
D) JOHNNY F’ING FOOTBALL!!1

We are favored in an away game against a top 10 team and are playing in prime time in front of a nationwide broadcast television audience — can we please drop the whiny ‘we never get the respect we deserve from the national media’ mess?

No whining here; A little fun at the expense the national media cannot be helped. Frankly, I would prefer the talking heads count us out from now until January. If we win every game, how does it matter? Also, I thought it was obvious that D is the (tongue-in-cheek) expected result.

Look, Georgia is getting respect. How much of it is deserved depends on getting the win first, and second, making it convincing. After that, people will say whatever they say. Meh.

I suspect it won’t get the attention it deserves (too much other fun stuff to talk about), but I thought our front 7 looked pretty bad last night. Maybe Clemson just has an outstanding OL, I don’t know. But aside from a few successful blitz schemes, I thought we really got pushed around.

41-35 Dawgs. We miss an extra point and hold the kittycats in the shadow of our own goalposts to pull out the game late in the 4th quarter. On Monday, a large segment of UGA fans re-up their high blood pressure medication.

No doubt – when you realize others are exploiting you, eventually you want “your piece” too… I just thought it was noteworthy someone from the WWL could (1) actually recognize it and (2) had the balls to say something about it on air…

So Andrea and Heather say Clemson wins , because “Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins and a veteran offensive line have the upper hand over a defense that only returns three starters, including just one up front.”
…We’ll just see about that.

Might not be a shoot out. 1) if Georgia can and does lean on its running game, it’ll shorten the game and lower the score. 2 ) even good offenses frequently don’t come out of the gate clicking on all cylinders. 3) it’s a big nationally televised game and gameday showed up. I am legitimately worried about Murray being way to amped up and commiting a couple costly turnovers. Throw in the concerns about the defense and yes I’m plenty worried.

Dawgs win, but are you guys watching freaking ‘Bama? Defense holds VaTech to no yards in three downs, then the punt is returned for a touchdown. If Saban ever had a soul, he definitely has sold it to the Devil at the crossroads.

I think it’ll be Dawgs, 35-30. And the contrarian in me says that the secondary will exceed expectations but the D-Line will surprisingly struggle with Clemson’s run game, leaving run defense as our main worry heading into week 2.

Would be nice to at least make Boyd have to throw the ball or hand it off on the goal line to score. Sigh. Muffed punt giveith, Murray takeith away. Not that his o-line is doing him any favors. And someone tell Marshall that breakaway speed is great in the open field but unless he hits the damn hole instead of dancing he’s not gonna get to show off that speed. Of course it would help if he wasn’t running it up the middle every time.

Marshall is back, so maybe he wasn’t hurt. But the Oline is still MIA. Clemson can’t be THAT much stronger up front. Some of our guys aren’t even touching their assignments. Very bad start to the second half. Quick slants or outs, please. Now.

That first play from the five, Marshall up the middle. Why not just try a pass to the back corner? Still can’t get over the offensive line. I never see our team till they start playing games on TV. I had been believing the preseason talk about our strong O-line. Dammit, Clemson is an ACC power, not an SEC power.

Well. Looks like an 0-2 start. I can hear MR after SC stomps us talking about how there’s still lots to play for. Watched Tunsil starting as a freshman for Ole Miss the other night and he looked better than any o-lineman on our team. That worked out well.

1) Georgia needs to go to tackling school. 2) Bobo’s going to get his “balance”. It’s 2nd and goal to go and it’s 3rd and goal to go and Bobo still calls plays to make a statement rather than calling plays to score. 3) Offensive line?

We don’t have the level of talent that Bama does. Years of bad o-line evaluation. Like putting all our eggs in one basket with the Tunsil kid this year only to have him go to Ole Miss and we have no plan B. Pretty much stuck with this soft bunch at this point. When you get steamrolled all night by a Clemson just imagine the Clowneys and the guys LSU seems to always have. Just ugh.

Who’s ready for the obligatory mark Richt “we still have lots of goals to play for” speech next Sunday? Aaron Murray. You’re a good guy and its been real and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun. Not that your OC or OL helped you much tonight but that pick after the muffed punt was classic AM. I’m ready for a new era.

I am sick of our AD scheduling these stupid games to open the season. You win national titles by breathing cupcakes and winning the SEC. This isn’t 1983 – under the current system, there is nothing to be gained and everything to lose by playing these games.

+1,000,000. When was the last time you saw Florida open the season on another team’s field? And a top 10 team to boot? There’s a reason why Florida was so successful in football for the last 20+ years and proper scheduling had a lot to do with it.

D gave up 500 yards….you might want to raise expectations just a tad there. Yes, they are young, and yes they may be great by the end of the year, but the big game was tonight, and they did not come ready.

They gave up 500 yards on the road to the number 8 team who’s been watching UGA film since this game was scheduled and then had the entire offseason to prepare for this game and this game only. We play the same amount of top ten teams in September as Clemson does all season.

That game game down to a 17 play stretch that began with 10:38 to go in the 2nd Quarter and ended with our first possession of the second half. 17 plays, -9 yards.

Bobo’s gonna Bobo.

I’m sure Blutarsky will tell us all about how it wasn’t on Bobo, but given the hands that Bennett, Scott-Wesley, Conley, Hicks and Lynch showed in limited use tonight, we should have been throwing the ball to open up the run when we saw that Marshall/Gurley were both hurt. It’s not like we haven’t played without Mitchell before.

20-29 passing, 41 rushes. Of those 41, Marshall had 16 for 43 yards – that’s a stat line that belongs out in Stillwater circa 2009.

Murray isn’t the reason we lost that game. That came down to coordinators – Venables gambled and they got a pick out of it. Bobo put all his chips on Marshall up the middle, but the wheel kept turning up Red 19.

Can’t really blame Murray for his blindside protector playing the role of a turnstile on the sack fumble. Though he does seem to drop the ball on a blindside hit more than any QB I can remember. The INT after the muffed punt was classic AM though.

well in all seriousness, we put up 35 points…and yes, Clemson’s D sucks, so that’s not a ton, but Bobo wasn’t blocking tonight. That said, it would be so nice if O-line were ever and actual strength at Georgia. Yes, the game could have been called better, but I think more blame lies elsewhere tonight.

As a UGA fan, I feel like I’ve been in the movie Groundhog Day since 2008. It’s the same thing over and over and over. Bad penalties, poor qb play, special teams letting us down at crucial times ( other than the fake punt), coaching always a step behind the other guys, etc.
Any Mark Richt team is going to have to prove me wrong before I buy into the hype again. My wife is an Ohio State alum and asked me what’s wrong with UGA. The only way I can explain it to her is that Richt is the re-in carnated/ zombie John Cooper. In other words, good for 8-10 wins per year but will never, ever get us to the big game. 2002 and 2007 were our high water marks…

A few thoughts: 1) Harvey-Clemons was the player we missed most out there. Norman tried his best but was a liability. Entirely possible that he would have been the difference in the game. 2) Marshall is very good at some things and not at others, and I’m not sure our staff knows the difference. His and Gurley’s are not interchangeable skill sets. 3) How the O-line pulled that disappearing act is an utter mystery, given their strong start and finish. 4) Two plays that really changed the game: Matthews’ inability to make that open-field tackle on 4th down and the botched FG snap. 5) Clemson’s #1 dropped everything that came to him the whole night, except for that Sunday hop bounce on the onside kick. 6) How Marshall and Conley didn’t tear knee ligaments on those awkward tackles is beyond me. Maybe the benefit of being young. 7) Speaking of knees, I’m worried about Mitchell’s. 8) How about Bennett’s one-handed catch in the 1st half? An incredible play. 9) Todd Gurley showed a lot of toughness tonight. I’m even more impressed with him than before. 10) I think the defense is exactly what we thought it would be, with plenty of potential to improve. We didn’t win tonight because of bad OL play and the cumulative effect of too many costly mistakes.

Agree with you completely on Marshall and Gurley. They are NOT interchangeable. Marshall has speed and skills but only in the open field. He doesn’t seem to hit the hole hard and doesn’t break tackles. Maybe behind a good o-line he might be able to run up the middle but Gurley has the ability to make plays on his own. Another point I’d add to your list is how did we not attempt a single pass into the end zone all night when Clemson’s weakness was supposed to be their weakness?

Agree entirely with you WF. Only thing I’d add is seeming to always call a run on 1st and 25 (which came up far too often). Getting 8-10 on a quick slant would be a boatload better than Marshall getting 3 on a draw.

I’m not sure we’ve got the athletes on the OL to compete at the top, no matter how many stars they had as recruits. Maybe it’s a lack of coaching, or coaches not adjusting, but they seemed to be manhandled for large stretches of time. Of course, Boise State did the same thing to us two years ago, and I’d wager we had better athletes than they did.

We will beat USCe next week. Mark my word.
To all you sad sacks saying our O Line sucks, just remember, when they know what’s coming (as in calling the same thing ,5 fucking series in a row) it’s hard to block for. This loss is not on Murry, the O line, or the RBs or the Dee, This is all on play calling, and the coaching staff.

I can only imagine what Clowney is going to do to the O-line Georgia fielded tonight. Actually, very quietly USCe has developed another DE that is just about as good as Clowney. They’ll both have a field day next week.

So what makes you think we’ll beat USC? Aren’t the same guys calling the plays next week? Anybody need two tickets? Jk; I’ll be there to cheer them on even if there’s not a lot of confidence behind it.

my friend, go watch our left tackles at the end of the 2nd quarter again. Whether pass or run, they were getting abused. I like your optimism, but the one thing I don’t see is a good matchup with the Cocks right now. They have the best D-line we will face and our O-line was the worst unit on the field tonight – and yes, that includes a unit with a walk-on safety getting repeatedly torched.

I sure hope you’re right, Rampdawg, but I wouldn’t bet $5 on us beating the ‘Cocks. Spurrier knows how to get a team ready to play, especially against UGA. He’s a great game coach as well. Of course, I can’t stand the guy, but he’s got our number.

Pretty brutal over here….I’ll simply say that this game is symptomatic of Richt’s teams. They don’t quite make the hustle plays like recovering the botched Clemson punt in the end zone (a few guys standing around). 5th year QBs getting many delay of games. It’s always a few little things and mistakes that kill us (botches snap this time, but you can count them throughout the years). We just never quite do enough outside of Jarvis Jones vs. Florida to win the big ones.

Clemson’s a good offensive football team. The hapless, unable to tackle UGA D made Clemson look like a GREAT offensive football team. Even with the warts Georgia’s O played well enough to win tonight. It was the D that let everybody down. I’ve completely changed my mind on Grantham. If he is an improvement over Willie he is only a slight improvement. Last season he managed to take a defense that had 7 players drafted by the NFL and turn it into an average defense. The current D doesn’t do the basics–like wrap up when tackling. The boo birds will be out in force tomorrow and many of them will blame Murray but it wasn’t Murray’s fault. He didn’t play a perfect game but the O scored enough points to win the game. Hell, Gurley must have had almost 200 yards rushing. In the final analysis it was the D (and special teams) that lost this game. That said, I’m saving my worst ire for the real culprit here–Money-Grubber McGarity. I’ll post more on him tomorrow after the dust settles.

Just curious if people have been serious about all the Tray Matthews pre-season/spring hype? I realize that he is just a freshman, but had one of the most abysmal games I have ever seen a safety play. I cannot imagine what Spurrier’s play-calling will do to our DB’s.

Langley is the absolute superstar of those DB’s. That kid is legit. He went toe-to-toe with Watkins all night and more than held his own. He looks like the best CB at UGA since Champ.

They will get better, but man, to lose the last two games with a wtf moment on the 5 yard line and a botched 10 yard field goal, it is incredibly difficult to be a UGA fan. At least we are not Oregon St. Or Kansas St.

vs. a top 15-20 team, on the road, our best defensive player suspended, starting 3-4 true freshman and a 5’9″ walk-on on defense, losing our 3 best offensive weapons in the first quarter and being a botched 10 yard kick and a blown non-review by the refs from winning…..or….watching a 1-AA team go down the field in the last minutes to beat you on your home field…pretty sure I would prefer the former.

Something else to think about was if Harvey-Clemons had been playing instead of Connor Norman. Norman bit on the play fake on the long Sammy Watkins TD. He also got beat on the wheel route that made it 38-28. Whole game might have been different if Josh had been playing.
Game also would have been different if Gurley and Mitchell hadn’t gotten hurt.
We only tried two screen passes.
We had a number of penalties negate first downs by the offense.
Why in the world did we keep trying to run it up the middle with Marshall for 6 drives in a row?
Murray definitely lived up to the plays poorly in big games label.
AND despite all of that, we were one high snap from having a tie game
Slightly pissed off to say the least

I am not taking anything away from Gurley at all, he had an excellent game. I just wish he had been on the field more instead of Marshall. Marshall had four more carries than Gurley. You would think the only reason would be they kept Gurley off because of his leg injury. If Gurley had been out there more instead of Marshall, maybe the game goes differently

Marshall is just not being used correctly. They need to get him outside the tackles more. They guy clearly has talent but is not built for running up the middle…could we maybe even see he and Gurley on the field together, for chrissakes?

Last night was a terribly vanilla game plan. I hope Bobo was trying to save the good stuff for Spurrier against a much tougher defense.

So Murray’s fumble leads to an easy touchdown and then he throws the pick after the muffed punt to give the ball right back to Clemson. And to think all this time I’ve defended Murray against the big game criticism but it happens every time. How many times do I have to see this rerun before I start expecting it? Well I’ll just go ahead and call it; Murray with at least two turnovers next week, at least one of which will lead directly to a USC score. Don’t even try to tell me you can’t see it happening because I know all the times it’s happened in the past are running through your head right now.
Anxious to see if whoever the next guy is ends up being less turnover prone than Murray.
And after all that ranting, I can’t ignore the fact that we were only one botched FG away from it being a tie game. And we were only five yards (and some painfully obvious play calling) away from taking the lead. Penalties, turnovers, questionable play calling; I’m not sure if the fact that we did a lot of things wrong (instead of just one or two) makes it hurt more or less.
And what all this really boils down to is that I’m just really freaking sick and really freaking tired of being disappointed big game after big game.

I am with the Mayor. I think this one is on Grantham. Our offense scored 35 points. Let me type that again – our offense scored 35 points. If you think our offense ought to be responsible for scoring more than 35 points a game, you’re crazy. Bobo was making a lot of head scratching calls with Marshall up the middle, and it was not an awesome game by AM – I was yelling at the TV with the rest of you, but at the end of the day, our offense scored 35 points, period. Ought to be enough.

I also don’t give a dang about the fact that our poor ol’ DC had to start a lot of freshman. This is what, his 4th year? Is he not responsible for recruiting and running new players through the program every year in a methodical manner so that we don’t have to rely on a bunch of freshmen and other kids without a lot of game experience?

Grantham gets a pass because people like their DC to be “fiery” – they think his obnoxious attitude makes him tough – but not only does he act like kind of a smug punk, his defenses let other teams score a lot of points. Stopping other teams offenses is his ONLY job, and he’s not very damn good at it. I don’t care about the suspensions last year – other teams have injuries, suspensions, whatever – they suck it up and do their job.

Tell me you hang this game on AM or Bobo, and that you’re cool with 38 points, and I’ll suggest you are judging personalities and not performance.

You do that by building them up one step at a time CD rather than just throwing them into the deep end. Ideally, start with a cupcake game at home. Then play a team that is a little better on the road. Then play a first class team at home. Then a first class team on the road. McGarity didn’t do the Dawgs any favors by starting the season playing Clemson on the road, particularly when he set that game everybody in the world knew in advance that we are going to have to play South Carolina early in the season. The SEC office dropping LSU on us in the 4th week is just icing on a sh!t cake. If you want to really bake your noodle, think about what would have happened in 2011 if the Dawgs had opened with a cupcake instead of losing to Boise. They would have had 1 loss and been playing the SECCG for a spot in the BCSNCG like last year, that’s what. Maybe they would have been rated so high in the polls that the SEC refs would call an honest game. Maybe the Dawgs beat LSU and play Bama in the BCSNCG that year. Go back and look at the schedules back when VD was HC. You rarely find any of this kind of BS. They scheduled to maximize our chances of winning.

There were only 2 teams playing and somebody had to win. Plus Clemson was playing at home. Cardinal sin, opening the season at somebody else’s place. Clemson’s pretty good historically. They have been playing football for over 100 years. How many times when Clemson opened their season at home have they lost? I’m betting pretty damn few.

CD, just to make it easy for you I looked it up going back 35 years. Almost every year (except for a couple away games and a couple of neutral site games) Clemson opened at home. They lost 3 of those games. Interestingly, one of those was to UGA, in 2002. I don’t have time now but maybe tomorrow I’ll look all of their home openers up. I’ll bet they lost less than 10 for the whole time.

Mayor, I appreciate what you’re saying. But it doesn’t seem to matter how well-seasoned our players are – playing in big games is not the issue. We had plenty of starts under our belt last year, had played in some big games, etc, and our D still underperformed. Even this year – 50% – 60% of this team probably got some snaps in the SECCG, Florida, the bowl game, etc.

Shrinking from competition is a defeatist answer. I’d rather lose a close one to Clemson than beat Buffalo any day of the week. It’s our coaches’ job to make sure we have the players and the plan in place to execute on the first game of the season. There’s always going to be a first game, so don’t duck it, just figure it out and win the damned thing.

You miss my point. I’m fine with playing Clemson, just do it in the 4th or 5th week of the season like we did when VD was HC and we had an AD who wasn’t a f#cking retard! (Excuse me. Sorry for the rant. By comparing McGarity to a retard I have insulted retards everywhere.)

I think it feels like he choked because he spilled the ball on the UGa 15yl and tossed away a chance at points just when the Dawgs needed them at the end of the 1st half. It was hardly the performance to be expected from a 5th year Sr.

You guys have placed an impossible burden on Murray IMHO. The QB touches the ball on every play. He’s not perfect, so there will be occasional screw-ups (fumbles, bad exchanges between the QB and the center or between the QB and the RB, interceptions, etc.). You have to look at the totality of the QB’s play. The O had 500 yards total offense and 322 of it was passing. He was 22 of 29. Sure it’s easy to look at one play in isolation and say “if Murray had just” done this or that we would have won the game. Murray DID do enough to win the game. The O scored 35 points and ran up over 500 yards against the #8 ranked team in the nation. The UGA D gave up 38 points. Hello!! Who lost this game? The D, that’s who.

Know what? If you’re on here crying about how bad the Dawgs are, screw yourself. You sound like the team lost just to piss you off. I didn’t see any of our players quit out there tonight. They played their asses off and got beat by a better team. Simple as that.

Well….I agree they damn sure never quit, but we made enough mistakes to get beat by three good teams….noise, inexperience, whatever it was, we mangled ourselves and Clemson managed to hold on to win by three points.

Any time the droolers who do that kind of thing for a living PREDICT Georgia to win a national championship I figure we are over rated.

When Georgia wins national championships its a surprise. Forever.

Hopefully all the bad things that happened cleared our minds so we can get ready for a much better team than Clemson.

This guy Grantham blows,I’m sorry.We have faced 8 ranked teams in the last 4 seasons and his defense has yielded over 30 pts in 7 of those games.That is the problem here…has there ever been a SEC champion that gave up 38 pts without it being an overtime game?You guys can run that Bobo/Murray mess all you want,but damn… 38 pts is somehow overlooked?

Overall, I don’t disagree. But the short field fom Murray’s fumble as well as those inept 6 drives in the middle of the game that didn’t give the defense any rest didn’t help. So while Grantham is a train wreck, some of this lies on the O. In addition to the typical Murray brain farts, throw in the same dumb penalties, underwhelming OL, crappy special teams, and missed tackles, and it seems to be Groundhog Day yet again.

You have to take the short fields with the long fields, and our D cannot defend either. Georgia won the TOP battle by about 4 1/2 minutes. The job of the offense is not to cater to the defense or “protect” the defense by slowing down its game plan, etc. The D should be sufficiently conditioned to play four quarters of football. As it is, they were not even prepared to play a good half.

A suspended member of our secondary and a couple of injuries back there are not the reason we lost this game. I am understanding with some of that. But we need to have guys 2 and 3 deep who can step up and play some realistic approximation of Georgia football. Last night was not that.

I’m not angry or a lunatic fan, it’s just a football game. But I would just like to see us lose for better reasons than being confused, not wrapping up, and not planning ahead (e.g. 2010/2011: hey, we’re going to need some DB’s and safeties when all these dudes gradulate or go pro, maybe we oughtta recruit a couple NOW.)

I have been defending our offense, but in addition to joining the rest of you in being frustrated with running Marshall into the backs of our lethargic, speed-challenged OL, I have another gripe about the coaching.

By the end of the first quarter, we realized what kind of game this was going to be. Score a ton of points. Score them by the buckets.

And then we immediately went into what I’d call “prevent” offense. They get big props for faking the punt, it was that kind of game and required that kind of mentality. But the two biggest decisions that stood out to me:

> Tried to kick a field goal on 4th and goal from the 2 yard line instead of going for the TD. Worst case scenario? Tigers on their own 1 yard line. No, they could not have predicted the ridiculous FG issue, but you have to ask yourself – in a game like this, will we get another, better chance to score 7 points than we have with 4th and 2 right now? Or is it more likely we’ll be trying to march 75 yards in 2 minutes against much heavier odds than we face right now, basically standing in Clemson’s end zone?

> Punting on 4th and 15 with six minutes left and down by two scores – (decision: do you have a better chance of AM completing a 15 yard pass or recovering an onside kick?).

I feel like our coaches don’t realize that sometimes the odds against you really suck, but that the alternative – putting off going for it – only means you’re going to face even worse odds later, and half the time we get beat by the clock.

I hope you are right Rampdawg but the Georgia D I saw last night won’t stop South Carolina any better than they did against Clemson and the South Carolina D is better than the Clemson D. That means a likely loss to South Carolina (for a 4th year in a row) and also a likely loss to LSU in week 4. This UGA team will probably be 1-3 after 4 games. Get used to disappointment.

Bloviation for the Dawgnation

Quote Of The Day

“It brings back a great Bulldog running back in Thomas who has NFL playing experience and has had success as a college coach at multiple schools. He also inherits a position that has been built to an elite level by Bryan. And it gives Bryan the opportunity to return to coaching the position he played and the one where he cut his teeth serving as a graduate assistant under wide receiver coach John Eason here at UGA. It also provides him with a new experience as a passing game coordinator.” -- Mark Richt, AB-H, 2/16/15